It may seem hard to believe, but Toyota almost didn't make it in the US. Its first car, the Toyopet Crown, was a flop. Toyota helped establish a huge Japanese-American community in Torrance, California that finds it hard to imagine the company is moving on.

It's rare to see an Asian gun club. Most gun owners in the US are white males. Yet Filipino immigrants in the Norco Running Gun Club of California say guns are part of Filipino culture, and part of the intertwined history of the Philippines and the US.

There’s a crisis on the farms of America: Young people don’t want to work there. Agriculture experts are well aware of this. One strategy is to reach out to low-income, minority students, often immigrants in urban areas, grooming them to someday run the farm.

Updated

02/11/2014 - 12:45pm

For 30 years, a variety show has helped Vietnamese expatriates remember the past and pass down their culture and anti-communist politics. Part comedy and part musical extravaganza, the show has become a family tradition for many Vietnamese around the world.

Updated

10/23/2013 - 4:00pm

David Tran, the man who created Huy Fong Foods' Sriracha, has never advertised his hot sauce. Yet, that ubiquitous red bottle with the green cap can be seen in restaurants across the US. How'd it get so hot?

Maladh Mohammed Ali's family moved to the United States about six months ago. Part of her family at least. One of her sons died in Iraq, where the family is from, which made the whole move possible. But the family is finding adjusting to the United States to be difficult.

Nayomi Munaweera was born in Sri Lanka, raised in Nigeria — and then fled that country for the US after a coup. Now, she's published her first novel and recounts the difficulties of learning the ins and outs of teen life in Los Angeles, including her first encounters with hairspray.

As immigration reform continues to percolate, some states and communities are taking measures of their own. In California, the state senate approved a bill that, if it becomes law, would prohibit local agencies from working with a specific federal immigration program.

Well-tended lawns and the sound of leaf blowers have a lot to do with California's immigrant roots, and not just ones that stretch south into Latin America. The history of garden work in California stretches further back to the state's striving Japanese immigrant community.

For 50-some years, the Cold War dominated life in Russia, Europe and the United State. In the nearly two decades since it ended, though, the physical manifestations of those decades are rapidly disappearing. A museum in California is hoping to hang on to the past and make it real for the future.

During the Cold War, all things Western were either forbidden or held in deep suspicion among officials east of the iron curtain. Yet, somehow, the culture of skateboarding that cropped up in California made it into East Berlin, where it thrived. A new documentary looks at that evolution.

Over the weekend, in Long Beach, Calif., a tournament featuring some larger-than-life competitors took place — the 14th annual US Sumo Open. Surprisingly, it's the biggest amateur sumo competition outside of Japan. So could sumo's time be arriving in the US?

Most Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, but what's special about the holiday differs for everyone. There’s family, sure. And food. And football. Yet for an Iranian-Armenian family and their community, it's a chance to celebrate religious freedom, and their lives in the US.

Updated

02/11/2014 - 12:45pm

For 30 years, a variety show has helped Vietnamese expatriates remember the past and pass down their culture and anti-communist politics. Part comedy and part musical extravaganza, the show has become a family tradition for many Vietnamese around the world.

As more Mexicans who moved to the United States are returning to Mexico, some by choice, others because of deportation, they're bringing with them children who've never known Mexico. Often, they don't know Spanish either, which puts them at a huge disadvantage in Mexican schools.

During the Cold War, all things Western were either forbidden or held in deep suspicion among officials east of the iron curtain. Yet, somehow, the culture of skateboarding that cropped up in California made it into East Berlin, where it thrived. A new documentary looks at that evolution.